‘Also’ in Ishkashimi:
Additive Particle and Sentence Connector∗
Lena Karvovskaya
Universität Potsdam
The paper discusses the distribution and meaning of the additive particle
-m@s in Ishkashimi. -m@s receives different semantic associations while
staying in the same syntactic position. Thus, structurally combined with
an object, it can semantically associate with the focused object or with
the whole focused VP; similarly, combined with the subject it can semantically associate with the focused subject and with the whole focused sentence.
Keywords: Ishkashimi, focus, additive particle, bracketing paradox
1
Introduction
This paper deals with the interaction between information structure and word
order in Ishkashimi1 . In particular the paper investigates the distribution and
meaning of an additive particle -m@s, comparable to English ‘also/even’. It appears that -m@s is able to receive different semantic associates in one and the
same syntactic position. When attached to the object, -m@s can semantically associate with the focused object-DP, the whole focused VP, and in some cases
even with the focused verb. Similarly -m@s attached to the subject can semantically associate with the focused subject, the whole focused sentence, and the
∗
1
I am very grateful to two anonymous reviewers, Malte Zimmermann, Radek Šimı́k, Clemens
Mayr, Kriszta Szendrői, and the audiences of the IS-workshop and the Semantics Colloquium
for their valuable comments and discussion. Many thanks to Ishkashimi speakers, especially
to Nika, Farzona Borakovi, Khanjarbek, Aslam, Usuf Kurbonbekovi, Zurbek Abibov, Bibinur, Selsela Abdulalievi, Bunafsha, Tovus, and Zarifa Nazarovi.
The data were collected during fieldwork carried out in September 2011 for Project A5 of
the SFB 632 “Information structure” in the Badakhshan Province of Tajikistan (the Pamirs).
Example (14) stems from a manuscript of Ishkashimi stories collected by Zurbek Abibov.
Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure 17 (2013): 75–97
F. Bildhauer and M. Grubic (eds.):
c
2013
Lena Karvovskaya
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Lena Karvovskaya
focused VP. The ability of -m@s to take wide scope over the VP or TP while
being “inside” it presents a structural paradox. The broad VP or TP focus scope
cannot be derived compositionally if we assume that in Ishkashimi -m@s appears below the VP or TP in the structure. Furthermore, Ishkashimi exemplifies
a crosslinguistic tendency for some focus particles to prefer nominal hosts, independently of their semantic scope. Similar problems have been attested in
other languages: Tangale (Hartmann & Zimmermann 2007), Japanese (Kotani
2009), Vietnamese (Hole 2008), Turkish (Kamali & Karvovskaya in preparation) — they all raise the question as to what extent the focus association can
be explained by the syntactic notions of scope and C-command.
The ability of focus particles to associate with focus (as defined in Krifka
(2006), an operator associates with focus if its interpretation depends on focus)
makes them useful tools for the investigation of syntax-information structure
and semantic-information structure interfaces. The standard theories of information structure assume that an informative sentence answers an implicit or
explicit question in the discourse. The most prominent part of the sentence (the
actual answer) is the focus. The placement of the focus particles can be flexible, but the surface order plays an important role. A focus particle should (precede and) C-command the focus associate, so that the focused part would be
in the scope of the operator (Krifka 2006; Zimmermann 2012). Focus indicates
the presence of relevant contextually salient alternatives. Additive and additivescalar particles indicate that at least one other alternative is true for the same
sentence (König 1991; Krifka 2006). The sentence topic might be focused as
well (contrastive topic); those sentences can answer questions like WHO did
WHAT opening two sets of alternatives: different participants and different actions.
The following section discusses the language and additive particles in general. Section 2 discusses the distribution of -m@s in Ishkashimi as well as its
associational behavior and the structural mismatches. Section 3 discusses possible ways of dealing with the structural paradox without favoring any particular
‘Also’ in Ishkashimi
77
one of them. Section 4 discusses the semantics of -m@s as a sentence connector.
Section 5 is the conclusion.
1.1
Language background and focus in Ishkashimi
Ishkashimi belongs to the eastern group of Iranian languages. It is spoken in the
Tajik province Badakhshan and in adjacent Afghanistan (the current study is
based on the Ishkashimi language of Tajikistan). UNESCO includes Ishkashimi
in the “Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger” (Christopher 2010) — the
number of speakers is estimated to be 1000. Ishkashimi is a non-written language; the dominant language of the area is Tajik.
The basic word order in Ishakshimi is SOV. As shown in (1) this word order
is used in a broad focus context2 . There is no specific morphological marking for
focus, but the word order might change depending on the information structure
of the sentence (Pakhalina 1959).
(1)
Q: ‘What’s new?’
A: Az-m
mošin x@r@nd-ok
1SG-1SG car bought-PERF
‘I bought a car.’3 .
#Mošin-m az x@r@nd-ok
#Mošin-m x@r@nd-ok az
Generally, all focused constituents in Ishkashimi can be in a position immediately preceding the verb. The narrow subject focus is compatible with both
2
3
The following glosses are used: ACC accusative; COMPL complementizer; DAT dative; DEM
demonstrative; DUR durative; EZ ezafe; GEN genitive; INF infinitive; M mood; OBJ object;
PERF perfective; PL plural; PRT particle; REFL reflexive; SG singular.
Ishkashimi exhibits some interesting linguistic phenomena. One of these is the existence of
moving agreement particles (MAPs) in the past tense (Payne 1980: 438). For example, in
(1) the person-number marker appears after the subject and not after the verb. Most often
MAPs attach to the first major constituent; they may also appear several times in the clause
note. The third person singular marker can be omitted; thus there are no MAPs in (2).
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Lena Karvovskaya
SF OV and OSF V word orders, as shown in (2).
(2)
Q: ‘Who cooked this food?’
A1: Lena ma awqot goxt
Lena DEM food made
‘LENA cooked the food.’
A2: Ma awqot Lena goxt
DEM food Lena made
‘LENA cooked this food.’
Narrow focus on the object is compatible with SOF V word order; speakers
occasionally also accept OF SV .
(3)
1.2
Q: What did the boy eat?
A1: Zoman tarb@z
xůl.
boy
watermelon ate
‘The boy ate watermelon.’
A2: Tarb@z
zoman xůl.
watermelon boy ate
‘The boy ate watermelon.’
Additive and scalar particles
“Focus sensitive particle” is a general term for a “function word” like only, even,
and also (König 1991: 10); those words have a large number of semantic and
syntactic properties in common in different languages. One of them is association with focus. The contribution of those particles to the sentence meaning
depends on the position of the focus in the sentence (Krifka 2006).
(4)
a.
b.
c.
Jacob also watches FOOTBALL.
Jacob also WATCHES football.
Jacob even watches FOOTBALL.
Thus in (4) the presence of also changes the felicity-conditions of the sentences: (4-a) is FELICITOUS if Jacob watches football and watches something
else (the alternatives are generated by the implicit questions in the discourse;
thus possible alternatives to football in (4-a) are other sports: volleyball, basketball, etc.), and it is INFELICITOUS if Jacob watches only football. (4-b) is
FELICITOUS if Jacob watches football and does something else related to foot-
‘Also’ in Ishkashimi
79
ball (maybe plays football) and INFELICITOUS if Jacob only watches football.
According to König (1991: 62) additive particles like ‘also’ entail the corresponding sentence without the particle and introduce a presupposition: at least
one of the alternative values under consideration in the context must be true.
Scalar additive particles like ‘even’ carry the same presupposition as the additive and also involve a scalar ‘conventional implicature’ (König 1991: 68).
Thus (4-c) would be FELICITOUS if Jacob watches football and something else
related to football and in the given context, football is extreme compared to the
other alternatives.
2
The Particle -m@s in Ishkashimi
A large percentage of Ishkashimi vocabulary has been borrowed from other
languages due to intensive language contact. For example, another focus particle
faqat ‘only’ was borrowed from Persian which in turn borrowed the word from
Arabic. Interestingly, -m@s is not a result of a borrowing. The etymology of -m@s
is Iranian; it is cognate with Avestian masiiah ‘bigger’, Middle Persian meh
(Bartholomae 1904: 1156), and Sogdian mas ‘further’ (Durkin-Meisterernst,
p.c.). In Ishkashimi, m@s can be interpreted either as an additive or a scalar
additive particle, depending on the context and prosody, cf (5). Some speakers
of Ishkashimi use an additional particle daže (< Russian) or hatto (< Tajik) to
stress scalar meaning.
(5)
M@
bibi
p@ da
koncert-m@s šed.
1SG . GEN grandmother to DEM . ACC concert-PRT went
‘My grandmother also/even went to the CONCERT.’
A test for additivity in (6) (adopted from Berger & Höhle (2012)) confirms that
-m@s has the property of additivity4 :
4
The test works as follows: in the context two objects are provided (such as the apple and
the apricot in (6)). The question addresses one of the objects, Did you eat the apple?, and
the answer mentions the other, I ate the apricot!, this could be a contradiction, but the addi-
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Lena Karvovskaya
(6)
. . . The mother goes away and leaves the child an apple and an apricot.
When she returns, she asks if the child ate the apple.
Q: Did you eat the apple?
A: Az-@m č[email protected]@s xůl!
1SG-1SG apricot-PRT ate
‘I ate an apricot as well.’ (meaning: I ate both)
The rest of this section discusses the distribution of -m@s and its association
behavior. I will argue that -m@s can associate with a constituent (VP or TP)
while being structurally inside it and that -m@s can function both as an additive
particle and as a conjunct, coordinating VPs or TPs.
2.1
The particle -m@s: distribution
If a nominal expression is focused, -m@s cliticizes to its associate NP, as illustrated in (5) and (6). Syntactically -m@s can only combine with nominal expressions. It cannot appear after a finite verb. Note that infinitives in Ishkashimi are
close to nouns syntactically (Pakhalina 1959: 57), and -m@s is licensed after infinitives, cf. (7). Other Ishkashimi clitics, for example, the mood marker -@s and
MAP-s, normally appear after m@s, cf. (7).
(7)
Aw r@nigi gap-du-k-m@s-@s
baisu
DEM Ryni speak-hit- INF - PRT - M can.3 SG
(She can speak German and Russian.) ‘She/he5 can also/even speak
Ryni (Ishkashimi).’
However, the alignment of -m@s and MAP-s may vary; in (8) number-person
markers appear before -m@s. Similarly, the object marker -i can appear after
-m@s or before, as illustrated in (8)–(9).
5
tive particle in the answer, I also ate the apricot!, changes the semantics of the sentence. It
becomes true for both objects (the contribution of the additive meaning component).
Third person pronouns in Ishkashimi are identical to demonstratives (DEM).
‘Also’ in Ishkashimi
(8)
81
The teacher asked a question. I knew the answer . . .
. . . m@ amsinf-o-n-m@s
/ amsinf-o-m@s-on p@zind.
1SG classmate-PL-3 PL-PRT / classmate-PL-PRT knew.
‘MY CLASSMATES also knew the answer.’
(9)
2.2
Q: You bought tomatoes and onions, but you did not buy potatos?
A: Az-@m kartoš-m@s-i
/ kartoš-i-m@s
x@rn@d
1SG-1SG potatoe-PRT-OBJ / potatoe-OBJ-PRT bought
‘I bought potatoes as well.’
A structural paradox
Example (10) demonstrates narrow object focus. -m@s is attached to the object,
this is similar to (6). A2 demonstrates that subject attachment would be infelicitous in this context.
(10)
Q:
Salima is baking bread today. What else is she baking?
A: Salima kulča-m@s pacu
Salima kulcha-PRT bake.3SG
‘Salima also bakes KULCHA (a sweet pie).’
A2: #Salima-m@s kulča pacu
intended: ‘Salima also bakes KULCHA.’
Interestingly, (10) is structurally identical to (11), where the semantic associate
of -m@s is the whole VP ‘bakes kulcha’.
(11)
Q:
Salima is washing the dishes. What else is she doing?
A: Salima kulča-m@s pacu
Salima kulcha-PRT bake.3SG
‘Saima also BAKES KULCHA.’
A2: *Salima kulča pacu-m@s
Intended: ‘Salima also BAKES KULCHA.’
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Lena Karvovskaya
So far we have seen that -m@s appears to the right of its semantic associate, but
this does not happen in (11); the whole VP is in focus, but -m@s stays inside
the VP, and it does not move to its right edge. The syntactic associate of -m@s
in (11) is only the object-NP ‘kulcha’; alignment such as V-m@s is not possible.
We are confronted with a structural paradox as illustrated in (12). The position
of the particle is different in the semantic and the syntactic representation of the
sentence.
(12)
2.3
PF: Salima [V P kulchaDP -m@s bakes ]
LF: Salima [V P kulcha bakes]-m@s
-m@s as sentence connector: structural paradox revisited
Similar to the VP level, there is a structural paradox at the sentence level. The
subject can be the morphological and the semantic host of the additive (13).
But attachment to the subject is also possible if the particle associates with the
whole sentence focus, cf (14).
(13)
[Lena šir-čoy p@vuT P ], [m@x-m@s šir-čoy p@v-onT P ].
Lena milk-tea drink.3SG 1PL-PRT milk-tea drink-2PL
‘Lena drinks milk tea, and (also) we drink milk tea.’
(14)
Wai mol-m@s
xi
dust-o-i
z@nayu isu
DEM husband- PRT REFL hand- PL - OBJ wash.3 SG come.3 SG
‘(One woman cooked pilau and called her husband to come and eat. . . )
and her husband goes to wash his hands.’
If one would just consider the structure of (14), taken without any context
such a sentence could answer Q1: Who else went to wash his hands? However,
this is not compatible with the existing discourse. The woman did not go to
wash her hands and there were no other people present (sentence (14) is taken
from a story). There is no other salient participant who went to wash his hands
with the husband; the predicate went to wash his hands would not be true for
‘Also’ in Ishkashimi
83
any other alternative. If the associate of -m@s is only the subject, the additive
meaning component of -m@s is missing. However, the discourse is well-formed
if we translate -m@s not as ‘also’, but as ‘and’. Let us consider the other possibility, that the associate of -m@s is the whole TP; Q2: What happened then?
If the semantic associate of -m@s is not the subject but the whole sentence, the
additive meaning of -m@s establishes the connection between two things that
happened: (i) the woman invited her husband to eat and (ii) what happened
after: the husband went to wash his hands.
This usage of -m@s is not that surprising if we consider the existing affinity
between additives particles and conjunctions; this is noted for instance by König
(1991: 65) for Latin, Greek, Russian, and other languages. This affinity is also
confirmed by the works of Zeevat & Jasinskaja (2007) and Jacobs (1988), which
show that at least in some of their usages English and and German und can function as additive particles. Jacobs (1988) differentiates between “non-focusing”
and “focusing” coordinators (those that interact with Focus-Background alignment). Thus, “focusing” und coordinates phrases which must show parallels
in their Focus-Background alignment. Zeevat & Jasinskaja (2007) explain the
asymmetry between two conjuncts connected with and with the help of focus
and the “current question in discourse”. The research in this area (including the
recent work by Toosarvandani (2010) on ‘but’ in Persian as a two-place focus
operator) indicates that the division between conjunctions and particles might
not be that clear — in many cases the same item actually fulfills both functions.
(13) and (14) demonstrate the structural ambiguity on the TP level, where
-m@s can take scope over the whole clause and functions as a sentence connector. It is exactly parallel to the ambiguity in (12), where the particle attached to
the object connected two VPs.
(15)
PF: [T P Her husbandDP -m@s goes to wash his hands]
LF: [T P Her husband goes to wash his hands]-m@s
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Lena Karvovskaya
2.4
Coordinated structures: structural paradox reloaded.
Interestingly, the additive particle -m@s can appear twice or more in coordinated
structures (similar to English ‘both . . . and’, ‘either . . . or’). König (1991: 66)
classifies such cases of “emphatic conjunction” as additional evidence of the
affinity between additive particles and conjunctions. The placement of the coordinator seems to follow the rules observed for VP and TP focus association.
In (16) the particle attached inside the VP marks VP coordination6 .
(16)
Lena [anglisi-m@s p@zinu]-t
[r@nigi-m@s-s bexou
p@zin-uk].
Lena English-PRT know.3SG-and Ryni-PRT-M want.3SG know-INF
‘Lena knows English, she (also) wants to know Ryni (Ishkashimi).’
Note that the first usage of -m@s is not additive in the strict sense of the word. It
is reminiscent of cataphora as it only corefers with the later -m@s but does not
have an additive meaning component on its own.
2.5
-m@s to the left of its associate.
There are puzzling cases where -m@s appears to the left of its associate, in contrast to what has been observed in (10). Thus in (17) -m@s is attached to the
object; the context, however, is supposed to trigger narrow verb focus (note that
in (17) the question is only targeting the action).
(17)
6
(i)
Q: What did Usuf do with the book?
A: Aw kitob zughd-@t kitob-i-m@s / wani-m@s
b@lavd
DEM book took-and book- OBJ - PRT / DEM . ACC - PRT read
‘He took (bought) a book, he also READ this book.’
See also three occurrences of -m@s:
Lena [gola-m@s-i
paced], [čogo-m@s-i
z@nud], [auqot-m@s-i goxt].
Lena bread-PRT-3SG baked dishes-PRT-3SG washed food-PRT-3SG cooked
‘Lena baked the bread, washed the dishes, and cooked the food.’
‘Also’ in Ishkashimi
85
The structural paradox appears “on two levels”, for the verb and for the VP:
structures like (17), where -m@s takes scope over the verb “from outside”, are
parallel to the sentences where -m@s appears after the subject and takes scope
over the VP (18). The associate of -m@s in (18) is a pronoun referring to the
subject of the previous clause; it most probably belongs to the background. This
presents a puzzle — an A2 which is exactly parallel in (10) is blocked.
(18)
Ad čondor oghad-uk R@n-bo. Ad-m@s p@zind-uk za
DEM goat
came-PERF Ryn-to DEM-PRT knew-PERF COMPL
R@njeon
tabjat-gol uk...
Ryn.people nature-with one
‘This mountain goat came to Ryn. And then he found out that Ryni
people love nature (are united with nature). . . ’
(19) is a summary of those cases where the semantic associate of -m@s differs
from its syntactic associate. (19-a) shows the VP association, (19-b) the TP
association (sentence connector), (19-c) the coordinated structures, (19-d) and
(19-e) are the cases where -m@s appears to the left of its associate.
(19)
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
PF:
LF:
PF:
LF:
PF:
LF:
PF:
LF:
PF:
LF:
SUBJ [V P OBJ DP -m@s V ]
SUBJ [V P OBJ DP V ]-m@s
[T P SUBJDP -m@s OBJ V ]
[T P SUBJDP OBJ V ]-m@s
SUBJ [V P OBJ DP -m@s V ], [V P OBJ DP -m@s V ]
SUBJ [V P OBJ DP V ]-m@s, [V P OBJ DP V ]-m@s
SUBJ [V P OBJ DP -m@s V ]
SUBJ OBJ DP [ V ]-m@s
[T P SUBJDP -m@s OBJ V ]
SUBJ DP [V P OBJ V ]-m@s
86
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Lena Karvovskaya
Possible Analysis
The observed mismatches between semantic and syntactic association of the
particle -m@s are very interesting from a cross-linguistic perspective. There
seems to be a tendency across languages for some focus particles to prefer nominal hosts, independently of their semantic scope. For example, the data strongly
resemble the structural paradox in Tangale (Hartmann & Zimmermann 2007:
123), where different narrow foci (object, VP, V) come with identical syntactic
surface structures, while the particle núm ‘only’ in Tangale can syntactically
associate only with DPs. Note the similarity between these two unrelated languages: -m@s in Ishkashimi shows strictly adnominal behavior, as does Tangale
núm; similar to Tangale, the surface structure in Ishkashimi is identical for narrow object, VP-, and V-focus. In this case, it becomes problematic to explain
the notion of the scope of the focus particles via C-command, at least on the
surface. So far no general solution has been proposed to capture this lack of direct mapping between syntactic and semantic interfaces in some languages. In
this chapter, I discuss three possible ways of approaching the problem: a phonological effect (without syntactic structure being involved), syntactic movement
involving an EPP feature, and mapping between prosody and syntax (focus projection). I will review these approaches, but in this paper I will not adopt any
single one of them.
3.1
Phonological process
One of the possible ways of explaining the placement of -m@s in Ishkashimi is
to assume that it is governed by phonological constraints. Thus, in many languages there is a phonological process which can flip the order of two words
(Embick & Noyer 2001). A typical example is the Latin conjunction que, which
does not appear between the conjuncts but embedded inside the conjunct (Embick & Noyer 2001: 575). In case -m@s were one of these particles, it could be
syntactically attached to the VP and could take scope over the VP, but phono-
‘Also’ in Ishkashimi
87
logically it could be flipped with the object (Merger occurs in Morphology after
the Vocabulary Insertion and exchanges structural relations between a clitic and
a Morphological Word on the PF). This kind of analysis is assumed by Kotani
(2009) for Japanese.
A good test case for this approach seems to be an object which consists of
several morphological words. If the process is phonological in nature for the
cases where the particle semantically scopes over the VP, one would expect
-m@s to appear inside the object when the object consists of more than one word.
As far as my elicitations show this is not the case; cf. (20).
(20)
Lena kruš.-i z@nud-@t
[tort-i bamaza-i ajoib-iObj ]-m@s paced.
Lena dish-OBJ washed-and cake-EZ tasty-EZ great-EZ-PRT baked
‘Lena washed the dishes and also baked a wonderful, tasty cake.’
The object in (20)7 consists of a noun and two adjectives. However, even in
this case, contrary to what the phonological analysis predicts, -m@s does not appear embedded inside the object but appears after the object. The phonological
approach does not make the right predictions for Ishkashimi.
3.2
EPP feature
A syntactic analysis for the placement of -m@s has been proposed by Kamali &
Karvovskaya (in preparation); it is inspired by similar analyses by Bayer (1996),
Kahnemuyipour & Megerdoomian (2010), Kamali (2011). This analysis would
assume two different syntactic structures: one for the narrow focus association
7
(i)
-m@s appears after the object even when it contains a relative clause:
Lena kruš.-i z@nud-@t
[tort-i bamaza-i za p@ iw
xon fri
ce
Lena dish-OBJ washed-and cake-EZ tasty-EZ that in DEM.GEN house COMPL good
dir-onOBJ ] m@s-i paced.
see-3PL
PRT - EZ baked.
‘Lena washed the dishes and also baked a tasty cake, which her family (in her house)
loves (lit. good sees).’
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Lena Karvovskaya
and the other for the broad scope of the particle. For narrow object and subject
focus, the particle is merged with its associate. In order to obtain VP scope, the
particle appears above the VP as proposed by Bayer (1996). A head ‘add’ (-m@s)
merges with the v/VP. Importantly, the addP has an EPP feature which attracts
the object NP, thus yielding the order Obj Additive V even in VP association.
A parallel analysis is assumed for the TP association. An addP that merges
with the TP provides the correct scope while causing the subject to superficially
occur to its left.
(21)
addP
kulča
m@s
VP
kulča
V
pacu
There is a group of problems which pertain to differences between Turkish
and Ishkashimi, which the analysis does not account for yet (see also Kamali
& Karvovskaya (in preparation)). First, structures like (22) are marginally accepted in Ishkashimi. This is a modification of (14) with DOSF V word order.
The sentence appears to be marked but somewhat acceptable for the speakers.
However it is ruled out by the analysis, which predicts when the object is scrambled to the beginning of the sentence, -m@s appears immediately after it.
(22)
dust-o-i
wai mol-m@s
z@nayu isu
REFL hand- PL- OBJ DEM husband- PRT wash.3 SG come.3 SG
‘And her husband goes to wash his hands.’
Xi
‘Also’ in Ishkashimi
89
Second8 , the “optional” object marker -i in Ishkashimi can appear after -m@s,
cf. (9). The analysis would have to explain why the case marker can follow the
particle having VP scope. Ishkashimi allows both alignments: the object marker
can appear after m@s or precede m@s. It is not clear if the object is being moved
out of the VP after the case marking has been assigned or if the case marking
is assigned after the movement and why Ishkashimi can choose between these
two strategies (see the order of Merge and Agree application in Müller (2009)).
3.3
Focus projection: mapping IS and prosody
The third way to approach the problem could be to explain the placement of
the particle via mapping between information structure and prosody. The way
in which -m@s receives a wider focus than one would predict from its syntactic
placement resembles one of the notions of focus projection. It has been argued
by Büring (2006) for English that any subconstituent (not only heads and arguments) can project focus. In certain contexts, for example, even the subject of a
transitive verb can project focus, as illustrated in (23) from Büring (2006).
(23)
8
(i)
Q: Why did Helen buy bananas?
A: [Because JOHN bought bananasF ]
Additionally one would need to explain some differences between Turkish and Ishkashimi
which do not follow directly from the analysis. In Ishkashimi, -m@s is exclusively adnominal and never appears on the verbs; in Turkish the additive particle can also appear in the
post-verbal region. In Ishkashimi, the particle does not appear in sentences with focused intransitive verbs unless there is a ‘dummy’ object like ‘cry’ in (i) (note that this structure does
not indicate verb focus; it is contingent on the presence of -m@s, which requires a nominal
host).
A:
B:
...
You always laugh.
Yes, I do laugh a lot . . .
Noiza šid-uk-m@s šid-@m.
But cry-INF-PRT cry-1 SG
‘. . . but I also cry.’
Thus the “positional” phenomena has additional “nominality” restriction.
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Lena Karvovskaya
Placement of pitch on JOHN in (23) resembles the sentences where -m@s syntactically attaches to the subject but semantically receives TP scope. The semantic
scope of -m@s can be as wide as the focus projection can go. One could assume
that placement of -m@s functions similarly to English pitch: the constituent is
either focused or is not focused and is new in the discourse (Büring 2006).
This explanation immediately runs into some problems with Ishkashimi.
First, although this observation needs to be tested, in sentences like (14), the
constituent which has more prosodic prominence seems to be the one before
the verb (which would be a mismatch between pitch placement and -m@s placement). Second, there are sentences like (18) in section 2.5, where -m@s attaches
to the given constituent (subject) instead of to the non-given one (VP). This
contradicts the F-marking principles known from English.
A more detailed study of Ishkashimi prosody is needed to see if mapping
between these two interfaces can help to explain the particle placement. It might
turn out that in terms of sentence melodies, Ishkashimi is a phrasal language,
similar to Turkish (Güneş to appear) or Hindi (Féry to appear). Thus Güneş
(to appear) and Kamali (2011) note that in Turkish, information structure does
not really affect the tone alignment. There are only phrasal tones and no tonal
marking on the focus/topic. If Ishkashimi turns out to be similar to Turkish,
one could argue that the placement of -m@s is affected by the phrasing rules
(for example, Güneş (to appear) claims the ordering of the verb in Turkish is
constrained by prosodical phrasing).
4
Semantics of -m@s: a “Real Focus Particle”
In this section I would like to discuss the properties of -m@s in its sentence connector function. Note that the differences in the associational behavior of -m@s in
Ishkashimi and also in English provide an alternative explanation to some of the
phenomena noticed by Matthewson (2006) for St’át’imcets. Thus, Matthewson
(2006) explains some unexpected occurrences of t’it ‘also’ via cross-linguistic
‘Also’ in Ishkashimi
91
variation of the presupposition status in the common ground (in St’át’imcets the
presuppositions can be in the speaker’s knowledge only). The cases discussed
are strongly reminiscent of Ishkashimi examples such as (14) and (16)9 , where
-m@s attached to the subject takes scope over the whole TP and receives meaning similar to English and. The presupposition in this case is ‘something else
took place’ which is very easy to accommodate. It is an interesting question
if t’it in St’át’imcets can function as a sentence connector. The prediction is
that -m@s, being in-between an additive particle and a conjunction would not be
infelicitous out of the blue as has been argued for also and too (Kripke 1999;
Tonhauser et al. to appear).
One should not assume that all additives which can serve as sentence connectors have equal semantics. As shown in Kamali & Karvovskaya (in preparation), the sentence connector function of additive -m@s is different from the
very similar additive particle dA in Turkish. Crucially, dA can mark contrastive
topics; as Göksel & Özsoy (2003: 1161) note, in sentences like (24-a) there are
two sets of alternatives: people and places. I could not elicit such examples with
Ishkashimi, as shown in (24-b):
(24)
9
[LENACT sinema-yaF gidi-yor], [BESTECT de konser-eF
PRT concert- DAT
cinema-DAT go-DUR, Beste
Lena
(gidi-yor)].
go-DUR
‘Lena is going to the movies and Beste is going to a concert.’
b. #[FARZONACT teatr šed] [ZUHROCT -m@s kinoF šed].
Farzona
theater went Zuhro-PRT
cinema went
Intended: ‘FARZONA went to the theater and ZUHRO went to the
cinema.’
Comment: they should do the same thing if you want to use -m@s,
as in (24-c).
a.
According to Matthewson (2006: 69), a sentence in St’át’imcets such as ‘Henry is also going
to Paris at Christmas’ can be uttered in a situation where “[the] addressee has no knowledge
of anyone planning a trip to Paris”.
92
Lena Karvovskaya
c.
[Farzona oghad] [Zuhro-m@s d@štar@k oghad].
Farzona came Zuhro-PRT later
came
‘Farzona came, and Zuhro came later.’
It appears that -m@s in Ishkashimi does not tolerate double contrast (different
participants, different actions). This observation shows that there are significant
differences between the members of the family of “additive particles” which
also serve as sentence connectors (TP scope). We observe following groups of
additives: (i) additives which can be used to conjoin sentences, -m@s, (also in
Zeevat & Jasinskaja (2007)); (ii) additives which can be used in contrastive topic
contexts when the comment part is parallel (German stressed auch, English too
(Krifka 1999)); (iii) Additives which can be used in contrastive topic contexts in
which the comment is not parallel (Turkish dA, which simultaneously belongs
to (i) and (ii)). The question would remain whether there is another group, (iv)
additives which cannot be sentence connectors.
Note that the particles grouped in (i) do not behave exactly alike. On the one
hand, (24-b) could be well-formed in English: Q: So, how was the evening? Did
the students go somewhere? A: Well, yes. Lena went to the cinema. Also, Beste
went to the theater (modification of Zeevat & Jasinskaja (2007)). On the other
hand, (14) would not be well-formed with also. It seems that in the sentenceconnector function, the additive particles undergo some rules of discourse organization which would also apply for conjunctions.
Zimmermann (2012) suggests that those cases where association with focus is strict and the additive gives a comment on the immediate question under
discussion (QUD) (see also Beaver & Clark 2008, Roberts 2004) are special
instances of the general pattern (Bole, Ngizim, Serbo-Croatian). In this sense,
-m@s in contrast to dA can be called a “real focus particle”: it can only give a direct answer to QUD; it can not refer to the higher structures in the discourse tree
and show that the question under discussion has been only partially answered.
‘Also’ in Ishkashimi
5
93
Conclusion
In this paper I have given an overview of some properties of the additive particle
-m@s in Ishkashimi. The main observation is that the semantic association of
-m@s does not correspond to its syntactic association. Crucially, -m@s can have
broader scope than one would predict from its syntactic placement. We have
observed that the distribution of -m@s is parallel at the VP and the TP level. -m@s
can appear inside the constituent and have semantic scope over it (attachment
to the object inside the VP and to the subject inside the TP). -m@s can appear
in one sentence several times and coordinate VPs or TPs; in this case the first
occurrence of -m@s will be more like a cataphora than an additive. In some
cases, -m@s adjoined to the subject or to the object can scope to its “right” and
take scope over the VP or V externally.
The differences in the associational behavior of -m@s in Ishkashimi predict
problems with elicitations including felicity judgments. While interpreting a
sentence which contains -m@s, the speaker chooses between different possible
strategies. For example, if m@s is adjacent to the subject, the consultant can
choose between narrow-subject or whole-focus association. In the first case, the
subject cannot be the only unique participant, but in the second case it can (see
sentences like (14) in section 2). Thus, the “cancellation test” (Renans et al.
2011) is not really applicable for -m@s when it is adjacent to the subject and the
object. One more interesting property of -m@s as a sentence connector is that it
is blocked from occurring in partial answers to QUDs, in contrast to additive
particles in Turkish or German. It turns out that in this function, -m@s is more
similar to English also. My paper does not provide a solution for the observed
structural paradox. I give a preliminary overview of the theories which could
explain the data. One could approach the problem as a phonological phenomena (Embick & Noyer 2001), a syntactic movement (Kamali & Karvovskaya
in preparation) or maybe even a result of syntax-prosody mapping. Finding a
solution will be the subject of future research.
94
Lena Karvovskaya
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at 34. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft.
Lena Karvovskaya
Universität Potsdam
SFB 632 “Informationsstruktur”
Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse 24/25
14476 Golm
Germany
[email protected]